She Would Be King

July 2, 2018
Moore’s debut explores the contradictions of Liberia’s tenuous 19th-century beginnings in this impressive fantasy that revolves around three indelible characters. A Vai girl, Gbessa, is cursed for being born on the day a wicked fellow tribe member dies. Thirteen years later, she is left in the woods to die but miraculously survives years of deprivation and a lethal snake bite. June Dey, born on a Virginia plantation, restrains his inhuman strength until seeing his mother brutally punished unleashes his rage. He flees slavery, discovering that bullets and knives bounce off him. Norman Aragon inherits the ability to become invisible from his Jamaican mother and fair complexion from his British father, who plots to take him to England for scientific experimentation. The three separately find their way to Monrovia and join together briefly to fight back against slavers. Gbessa narrowly escapes being kidnapped by slavers, gets taken in as a housemaid for a family of former American slaves that have settled in Africa, and endures the lingering prejudices of her employers after marrying into their social circle. June and Norman discover ongoing slave raids in the countryside and use their gifts to help the fledgling state’s fractured tribes fight European meddlers. Moore uses an accomplished, penetrating style—with clever swerves into fantasy—to build effective critiques of tribal misogyny, colonial abuse, and racism. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House.

Starred review from August 1, 2018

Many books are devoted to connecting Africans of the diaspora, yet Margaret Mead Fellow Moore's debut does so with remarkable physical, spiritual, and mystical dimensions. It reimagines the formation of Liberia through protagonists June Dey, a runaway from Virginia after conflict with his overseer; Norman, a freedman of mixed race from Jamaica; and, mainly, Gbessa, a woman from the native Vai tribe, who is deemed a witch and ostracized by fellow villagers. What seems a chance meeting is Mother Africa bringing them together for their gifts to be used to save Liberia, which still draws European enslavers despite the illegalization of the transatlantic slave trade. Whether separately or together, their encounters with others reveal their many-layered personalities as well as the changing societies around them. The descriptions of racism are not overt; Moore uses the experiences to reveal the systemic oppression of Africans of the diaspora and the desire to reconnect with the continent. The dialog is fluid and poetic, allowing readers to imagine the events, sights, smells, feelings, and sensations. VERDICT As with Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, this work will appeal to lovers of African, African American, and literary fiction.--Ashanti White, Fayetteville, NC

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2018
An ambitious, genre-hopping, continent-spanning novel that uses the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade as the backdrop for a magical realist adventure.Following four characters from far-flung corners of the African diaspora, debut novelist Moore tells the story of Liberia's formation in the mid-19th century. When a Virginia slave named Charlotte dies while trying to protect a fellow slave, her death sets in motion a series of supernatural events that changes the tiny West African nation's history. Her son, June Dey, flees from the plantation and soon discovers he has superhuman strength. He boards a ship for New York only to find himself headed for Liberia. Meanwhile, a white British scholar named Callum Aragon arrives in Jamaica to study Maroon communities and forces the Maroon slave Nanni to assist him. Nanni soon saves Aragon's life with the help of a peculiar ability: She can become invisible under certain circumstances. Nanni eventually gives birth to Aragon's son, a boy named Norman who possesses abilities similar to his mother's. Across the Atlantic, in a West African village called Lai, a little girl named Gbessa is born on a day that the village elders have proclaimed cursed; as a result, she garners a reputation as a witch. The reputation isn't entirely unearned: Gbessa has abilities that allow her to return from the dead. Cast out from her village, she becomes anathema to everyone but Safua, a little boy who promises to help her. June Dey, Norman, and Gbessa eventually find themselves united in Liberia as the fledgling nation is being wracked by incursions from French slave traders and tensions between black American settlers and African natives. Their desires for freedom and family drive them into each other's arms--and toward a major event in the history of Liberia's formation. Moore is a brisk and skilled storyteller who weaves her protagonists' disparate stories together with aplomb yet is also able to render her sprawling cast of characters in ways that feel psychologically compelling. In addition, the novel's various settings--Virginia, Jamaica, and West Africa--are depicted so lushly that readers will find themselves enchanted. Unfortunately, getting these characters' stories to intersect at the back end of the book requires a level of narrative contrivance that sends the tale careening out of myth and into the realm of clumsiness.A sweeping and entertaining novel encumbered by an unwieldy plot.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 1, 2018
Moore's stunning debut novel is a magic-realism tour de force taking readers on a journey through the beginnings of Liberia. Gbessa, a girl shunned as a witch by her own Vai people who later comes to terms with her immortality, is a heroine cast in the mold of legendary women. June Dey, with his extraordinary strength and almost supernatural origins, becomes a metaphorical representation of the journey of former slaves who moved from plantations in the American South to the newly created settlement of Monrovia. And then there is Norman Aragon, of mixed race, who fulfills his mother's deep desire to move to the free state from Jamaica, even as he comes to terms with his own power to disappear. Moore trusts her readers to follow complex characters and breathtaking plot twists as she brings together the story of what all of them leave behind and where they come together to create a brave new world. There is an aching sweetness to Moore's writing that effectively captures the dichotomous and vulnerable strength of her protagonists and catapults this into the realm of books that cast a long-lingering spell.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)